Lieberman Expert Report.Pdf
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA OAKLAND DIVISION TODD ASHKER, et al., Case No.: 4:09-cv-05796-CW Plaintiffs, CLASS ACTION v. GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF Judge: Honorable Claudia Wilken CALIFORNIA, et. al., Defendants. EXPERT REPORT OF MATTHEW D. LIEBERMAN 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page(s) I. STATEMENT OF EXPERT QUALIFICATIONS ........................................................... 1 II. EXPERT OPINION ......................................................................................................... 2 A. Is social interaction/connection a basic/fundamental human need? What does neuroscientific research reveal about the human need for social interaction/connection? Is it a need as basic as sleep, exercise or food? ................ 2 B. What kinds of social interactions or connections are necessary/important to meet these needs? ......................................................................................................... 5 C. What is the relationship between how the brain processes “social pain” and “physical pain”? ................................................................................................... 6 III. SUMMARY .................................................................................................................. 10 i I. STATEMENT OF EXPERT QUALIFICATIONS 1. I am a Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I am also Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at UCLA. I have published more than 160 book chapters and peer- reviewed articles, including many at the most prestigious scientific journals. I have also recently published the award-winning book Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect . I have won several major awards in my field and my university for both research and teaching. I am the founding and current editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience . I received my B.A. from Rutgers University in 1992. I received my Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1999. My full curriculum vitae can be found as Exhibit A to this report. 2. My work broadly focuses on the intersection of social psychology and neuroscience and my early research is often associated with the founding of the field of social cognitive neuroscience . Most of the research in my laboratory uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine individuals’ brain responses while thinking about or interacting with other people. Two lines of research in my lab pertain to the current report. First, we conduct fMRI studies examining how individuals are able to make sense of their social environments and infer what those around them are thinking and feeling. Second, in collaboration with Professor Naomi Eisenberger, I have conducted fMRI and behavioral studies examining social pain – the painful and distressing feelings that occurs when individuals are potentially or actually separated from others through rejection, exclusion, ostracism, or in response to the death of a loved one. 3. I have never testified in a court case previously. 4. I have been retained by counsel for plaintiffs in Ashker et al. v. Governor of California, et al. , pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of 1 California. 5. I am charging $150 per hour plus all expenses for my work on this matter 6. The findings and conclusions presented in this Statement are based on my years of research and analysis and the results of my review of materials pertinent to this case. As described below, I reviewed a particularly important article by Baumeister and Leary (1995). In addition, I examined more than a 1,000 articles that were published in the decade after Baumeister and Leary and cited this article. 7. I have been asked to address three issues in my testimony as follows: A. Is social interaction/connection a basic/fundamental human need? What does neuroscientific research reveal about the human need for social interaction/connection? Is it a need as basic as sleep, exercise or food? B. What kinds of social interactions or connections are necessary/important to meet these needs? What happens on the level of the brain when a person is deprived of social interaction/connection? How much deprivation of social interaction/connection triggers such a response – i.e. what does it take for the brain to register lack of social interaction/connection? C. What is the relationship between how the brain processes “social pain” and “physical pain”? Is the “social pain” that results from lack of social interaction/connection similar to “physical pain”? If so, how? II. EXPERT OPINION A. Is social interaction/connection a basic/fundamental human need? What does neuroscientific research reveal about the human need for social interaction/connection? Is it a need as basic as sleep, exercise or food? 8. It is considered settled science within the field of psychology that humans and all mammals have a fundamental need for social connection. The seminal paper on this issue is 2 “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Need,” published in 1995 by Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary. This paper has been cited more than 8,300 times by other publications. It is actually the second most cited paper in the field of social psychology from the last two decades (with the first most cited paper also affirming, though not focusing, on the principle that social connection is a basic need). Unlike many seminal papers that gain notoriety by also being controversial, there has been no major objection to Baumeister and Leary’s claims. To examine this systematically, I looked up all articles and book chapters that cited this paper in the first decade after it was published. I could not find a single paper that took issue with the main claims of this paper. 9. Baumeister and Leary provide nine criteria which any fundamental human need ought to satisfy. It should “(a) produce effects readily under all but adverse conditions, (b) have affective consequences, (c) direct cognitive processing, (d) lead to ill effects (such as on health or adjustment) when thwarted, (e) elicit goal-oriented behavior designed to satisfy it (subject to motivational patterns such as object substitutability and satiation), (f) be universal in the sense of applying to all people, (g) not be derivative of other motives, (h) affect a broad variety of behaviors, and (i) have implications that go beyond immediate psychological functioning” (p. 498). The remainder of the article goes on to marshal evidence demonstrating that each of these claims has been met for belonging and social connection. Thus, the authors concluded that the need to belong is indeed a fundamental human need and scientific consensus has continued to support this conclusion. The authors characterize this need to belong as a need to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships. 10. Additional findings beyond the scope of the Baumeister and Leary article speak to the evolutionary role that social relationships have in our survival as a species. For instance, 3 mammalian infants are incapable of providing for their own food and shelter and thus only through a persistent social bond with a caregiver will an individual survive beyond infancy. Many non-mammalian species do not require this social bond for survival, but all mammals, including humans, do. Because adult mammals have large brains, relatively speaking, full- grown brains at birth would make the birthing process via the birth canal virtually impossible. Thus, mammalian infants are born immature, with less developed brains, but the trade-off is that all mammals must be cared for in infancy, making social connection a clear survival need for the species. 11. Additionally, a lack of social connection and social support have been examined as risk factors for morbidity (i.e. death) and were found to be a greater health risk than smoking 15 cigarettes a day or continuing to smoke after a diagnosis of cardiac heart disease (Holt- Lunstad, Smith, & Layton, 2010). Social isolation or a lack of social support has also been repeatedly associated with various deleterious mental and physical health consequences (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Hawkley & Cacioppo, 2010; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988). 12. The scientific consensus is clear in support of the claim that social connection is a basic human need. To what extent is it comparable to other needs like food, exercise, and sleep? Each need has a different time scale depending on the physiological consequences of deprivation for each need. Without water an individual will die in a few days. For sleep, missing it for a night will clearly produce a deprived state but lack of sleep is survivable for many days. Humans have gone without sleep for 18 days though ethics concerns prevent discovery of the absolute limit in a controlled research context. Rodents have been kept alive for up to a month without sleep. Lack of exercise is unlikely to lead directly to death in most individuals, even over extended periods. However, lack of exercise is a catalyst for countless other negative 4 outcomes in terms of mental and physical health, cognitive functioning, and sleep. Thus, being deprived of exercise is clearly very deleterious to an individual. 13. Social connection is more of a need like sleep and exercise than food. No one will die from lack of social contact over a few days, but people will show evidence of being in a deprived state within